Manifest Destiny

Driving has taught me something about the nature of people, or maybe even the nature of America. I shall explain. Maybe I am just a slow driver, but I'm always confronted with eager speedsters who find themselves stuck behind my slow set of wheels. So they ride the bumper until open road is available, where he (or she) zooms off towards open road and freedom. Yet 90% of the time I meet them at the stoplight (or in extremely satisfying cases up the road getting a ticket). This insatiable need and desire for possession is the same need and desire that defined Manifest Destiny, or exploration of the West. After all its advances, these hurry-stricken road hogs are my best example of the destiny still at work, at least on a simple day-to-day basis.

The problem with me and the problem with where I am, is this:

1. How I define my own personal Manifest Destiny

2. When I deem my "destiny" reached

3. And how to sooth its ravenous nature

Let me exemplify. Not long ago I overheard an ECU student talking to a professor. He said to the professor, "I'm gonna be honest with you. I gotta get the [expletive] out of here." He was referring to Ada, Oklahoma, the town I have lived in for most of my life. He went on to greater details about where he came from and where he would rather be, when he said that I immediately thought about the eager car stuck behind the content car; an inhibition of sorts. I realized that's what Ada was to many people: a roadblock, the slow car blocking you on the freeway of your life.

Why is Ada like that? What makes it a roadblock to peoples hopes, dreams, ambitions, desires, freedoms, peace of mind, etc.? Why can't Ada be that feeling when you speed past the slow car and find yourself in front of open road? At times I feel like I'm stuck behind Ada and my life is raring to put the pedal to the metal, other times I feel like I am comfortably driving the Ada mobile, and my life is in perfect, content sync with the geographic location of Ada, OK, and on the rarest of occasions, I feel like Ada is somehow that open road feeling.

While others have defined themselves by what our culture has to offer. I have somehow managed to avoid that pull. And people feel deprived because they need things out there that places (such as Ada) cannot offer. Maybe this is why it feels like a life-draining town. I only suffer from the dilemma because so many I am around are apparently stuck behind Ada and not happy about it. It's hard for me to connect to people when they don't care or have no desire to identify with what I am at peace with. Does this mean I don't wish to see the world, or automatically close off options that reach beyond Pontotoc County? Obviously not, but I will not subject my life's direction to change simply because I have allowed my identity to be defined by huge, over reaching, near insatiable riches. I think in peoples' attempts to find life, they are really missing it.